


Icarus By Choice

by MillyVeil



Series: Ambush [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Awesome Evan Lorne, David Parrish Gets a Hug, David Parrish Needs a Hug, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Mission, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 02:22:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20166574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MillyVeil/pseuds/MillyVeil
Summary: Lorne takes care of his scientist after the events in "Ambush".





	Icarus By Choice

**Author's Note:**

> So, because I am sucessfully procrastinating working on my Marvel WIP, I decided to clean up and post the second part of the Ambush series. With a few years of accumulated objectivity (*cough*13 years*cough*) I realized when reading it that Lorne might be a little OOC in a few paragraphs. I tell myself he, too, is a little rattled and exhausted after the whole thing, so I attribute his brief loss of temper to that ;)

* * *

The infirmary was quiet now, calm after the onslaught of noise and activities that had trailed in their wake all the way from the gate. Lorne looked down at himself, at the caked mud and the gray drip-marks on the pristine floor under him. He surreptitiously moved his grimy boots further in under the chair and returned his attention to the nurse who was lining up the instruments on her tray.

Syringe. Scalpel. Black 5-0 suture. Her gloved hands moved calmly over the items. He forced his fingers to relax in his lap. They weren’t for him, they were for Bachman who sat on the edge of the bed, pressing a compress against the still seeping wound on his forehead. Not for him, Lorne repeated in his head when the nurse picked up the syringe and started prepping it. His strained relationship with needles wasn't the only reason his knee wanted to bounce. Post-mission jitters, adrenaline and cortisol and norepinephrine working their way out of his system at different rates. It would pass soon enough, it always did, but in the meantime Lorne was stuck in that strange middle ground where it felt like he wasn’t all there in the well-lit infirmary, like part of him was still out there, in the driving rain, in the mud, carrying one fourth of bleeding McKay and waiting for another ambush.

Lady Luck had been with them this time, and they’d made it to the gate without another incident. Beckett had been waiting and had pushed fluids into the unresponsive McKay before they'd even gotten him back to the infirmary. Once there the full medical team had descended on McKay and the inner trauma room doors had closed, leaving the rest of them on the outside.

Sheppard had stared at the doors, looking silently furious. Teyla had remained close by his elbow, tired but ready to run interference if looks were anything to go by. Dex had growled at the head nurse, who had been wholly unimpressed and sent them to the waiting area.

Lorne had had team members of his own lying on the other side of doors just like those, and he knew the worry, knew the frustration that ate at you until Beckett (or Janet Frasier, or whoever the resident medical officer was) came out and patted you on the shoulder and told you things were going to be okay.

Or not. You tried to be mentally prepared for the _or not_, but the real thing was never anything like what you imagined, _ever_, and with the closeness that inevitably developed in teams as small and tightly knit as the SG military teams, plus the civilians tossed into the mix - many of whom had never held a gun before signing up for the Atlantis mission – well, Lorne was thankful ever single time they stumbled back into the gate room, everyone unhurt and accounted for.

“He doesn't look so great,” Bachman said, his voice low.

Lorne's eyes flitted to the closed inner doors, but they were still closed.

Bachman lifted the wad of gauze from his forehead and studied it. “Well, yeah, McKay too, obviously,” he said, catching Lorne's look, “but I was talking about him.” He twisted a fraction and nodded stiffly towards the outer door.

Lorne glanced over his shoulder. David Parrish was hovering just inside the door, his back all but pressed up to the wall, out of the way and ignored by everyone in the the organized chaos that had trailed McKay and Bachman from the gate room. Lorne took in the tense shoulders, the muddy clothes, the drawn look on his face. Lorne had stayed behind and given Weir a twenty-second report when they came through the gate, allowing Sheppard to head to the infirmary with McKay. After that Lorne had headed straight down there to check up on Bachman and McKay, and he truthfully hadn't given David much thought, beyond a quick and heartfelt '_he’s okay, thank God he's okay_'.

He'd seen David being checked over and had assumed that once he was discharged he'd go shower and change, followed by getting something to eat. At which point Lorne had expected to be able to catch up with him. He sighed and patted Ben's shoulder before getting to his feet.

“Take it easy, okay? I'll check on you later.” He crossed the floor and came to a stop in front of David. “Hey. You okay?”

At the sound of his voice, David’s attention snapped away from the closed inner doors, his body tensing in an almost flinch. A moment later he relaxed, by sheer willpower from the looks of things.

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine. I just wanted to—“ He made a vague gesture towards the inner parts of the infirmary. When he lowered his hand, Lorne watched his attention catch and linger on the wet, muddy jacket he was still clutching. David’s gaze trailed down to his grimy pants. To the dark stains there. “I should go change. And eat.” The words were rushed, and before Lorne could say anything at all, David ducked around him. He pressed the control panel next to the infirmary door and was gone.

Lorne turned to follow, but came to an abrupt halt when he almost collided with Sheppard in the doorway.

“Sorry, Sir,” Lorne said and stepped to the side. Behind Sheppard he could see David disappearing around the corner at the end of the hallway.

Sheppard looked grim. He’d apparently made a quick detour around his quarters and a shower, because he’d changed his clothes and the mud and dirt that had stuck to various places wasn’t there any longer. His eyes lingered on Lorne for a moment before he canted his head in the direction where David had disappeared. “He okay?” he asked.

Of course David wasn't okay, Lorne wanted to tell him. McKay might have become some kind of super-geek over the past two years, used to things blowing up and people ending up dead around him, but David was a botanist. He dealt with plants. Dandelions and ferns, for fuck's sake. Watching people getting shot in the head, point blank, and having to play field medic with McKay bleeding all over wasn't what he was trained for.

“He's a little spooked. He'll be fine,” Lorne answered evenly.

Sheppard's nod was distracted. “Any news?” His eyes slid past Lorne's shoulder, into the infirmary.

“Nothing since you left. Beckett is still working on him.” Lorne remembered something and wiped his hand on his pants. He pulled the M9 from his pocket and held it out, muzzle down. “McKay's,” he offered when Sheppard just looked at it. Lorne had retrieved it from where McKay had dropped it after some encouragement from the sharp end of that knife. The same knife that moments later had sliced the inside of his arm open. “Missed handing it in,” he explained. “Should I take it down to the armory or do you want to take it?”

“Right. No, I’ll take it. Thanks.” Sheppard took the grimy gun and pulled the slide to the rear, checked the chamber. Flakes of dried, gray mud crumbled to the floor. “How's Bachman?” He took the clip Lorne handed him.

“Nothing some painkillers and a couple of stitches won't cure.”

Sheppard raised an eyebrow. “Then what are you still doing here?” He made a shooing motion with the clip. “Go take care of your scientist.”

Lorne didn't have to be told twice.

~ * ~ * ~ *~

The air in David's quarters was always warm, always a little humid, a little stale. It smelled like clean, fresh soil, with a baseline of something that reminded Lorne of the potted lavender that had occupied the every window sill in the house when he was a boy.

He found David leaning over his desk, carefully arranging the bagged samples he'd collected before the mission went all to hell. Leaves and a patch of moss shared the space on the desk with papers and open books. Lorne spotted a lumpy root sticking out from a soil-stained, wrapped-up towel. A couple of hairy acorns were scattered next to it.

“So,” Lorne said and picked up the root, turned it over in his hands. _Solanaceae?_ was written in David's hand on the small label that had been attached to the sample. At least that was what Lorne thought it said; the letters had run and smudged a little. “What happened to changing and finding something to eat?”

David plucked the sample from Lorne's hands and put it back on the desk before getting back to sorting. “Soon.”

Lorne picked up an acorn and turned it over in his hand. “Come on, this can wait. Shower. Change. Chow. Then you can get back to this.”

“As a matter of fact it _can't_ wait.” David was still firmly, stubbornly concentrated on the items in front of him. “The samples need to be processed and filed before they degrade, I have to write down my observations, and then, then I, uh, need to...” He trailed off, his focus lost somewhere far beyond the desktop he was staring at.

Lorne frowned. “Hey,” he said. He put the acorns down. “You okay?”

David looked up, blinked like in the two seconds that had passed he'd forgotten Lorne was even there. “Yes. Fine. I'm fine. You have your radio on, right?”

“Of course.”

“They'll call you? When there's any news, I mean?"

Lorne nodded.

David sighed tiredly and rubbed at his face. “They wouldn't tell me anything.” He looked up at Lorne over his hands. “That’s always a bad sign. Always.”

Lorne reached out and touched David's bare arm. Here, in the privacy of David's room, he could do that. “Listen,” he said. “If anyone can fix him, it's Beckett.” He ran his hands down the clammy, chilled skin, then stepped in to rub a little to get the blood going again. “And besides, McKay's too damn stubborn to die. Putting all of us out of his misery wouldn't be like him.”

David stiffened and shrugged away. “Don't do that,” he snapped. 

Lorne lowered his hands, self-conscious.

David glared at him. “So what if McKay's a pompous prick most of the time, but do you ever say thank you? Do you? Any of you? He regularly pulls miracles from thin air, for God's sake, so would it kill you to give him a break!”

Lorne felt his eyebrows climb and tried to remind himself that they'd all just had a pretty damn bad day, and that everyone - maybe especially David - deserved some latitude here.

“David, come on. That's not fair, he’s—.”

“And Sheppard's the worst one of you all!” David interrupted. “He's supposed to be a team leader. He should back McKay up, not treat him like, like—” His hands made small, angry circles in the air. “Even when he's been stabbed, when he's half unconscious and bleeding Sheppard makes fun of him, makes snide remarks, and—”

“Oh, come on, give Sheppard some fucking credit!” Lorne snapped. “He was just trying to keep McKay awake. And riling him up and pissing him off did the job pretty well there, didn’t it?” Until it didn’t, until McKay had lost consciousness from the blood loss, but by then they hadn’t been far from the gate. 

David crossed his arms over his chest. “You know what? I'm not even surprised. It's probably in the fine print somewhere on your sign-up papers. Thou shalt cover each other's backs. Thou shalt look the other way.”

Lorne looked up at the ceiling and tried to not sigh. He wasn't a complicated man. A warm shower and a hot meal went a long way with him. Dry socks were nice, too. Unfortunately none of those things looked like they were in his immediate future. He closed his eyes and pressed the knuckles of his fingers against his lids.

“I’m tired. You’re tired. Can we please have this discussion later? Just get in the shower and we’ll grab some food. Okay?”

“Nice deflection. Did they teach you that at the SGC? Ignore the problem until it goes away. Tell me, was that the same class where they showed you all how to keep the scientists in line?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, you know the game - a shove here, an insult and a veiled threat there.”

And just like that, Lorne ran out of latitude to give. “Know what?” he snapped. “If that's what you think, who am I to disappoint you? Now we're doing this my way.” He grabbed a handful of David’s t-shirt and backed the man across the room. “Sit,” he ordered when they reached the bed. He pushed a little more, until the back of David's knees hit the side of the bed. David lifted his chin a fraction, an uncharacteristic challenge in his eyes.

They glared at each other while the clock on the bedside table ticked on, undisturbed by the tension in the room.

David's damp shirt was chilly under his fingers, the heartbeats beneath it rapid. Lorne closed his eyes and felt himself deflate. Jesus Christ. What was he doing? What the _hell_ was he doing? He slowly unclenched his fingers from the shirt. He was tired, so fucking tired, not just from this mission, but from months of too little sleep and way too much stress, but this? This wasn't him. He wasn’t like this with anyone, and certainly not with David, who came to him with his guileless smile, who laughed at his bad jokes and was smart and amazing and enthusiastic and curious, who drove Lorne out of his fucking mind off-world when he’d get caught up in some botanical wonder that left him heedless and mindless of insignificant little things like Wraith and snakes and goddamn almost-grizzlies.

“I’m sorry.” Lorne smoothed the wrinkled fabric of David's t-shirt down with the flat of his palm. “David, I’m sorry.”

David sank down on the bed. Heavily.

“I’m sorry,” Lorne said again. When he got no response, he kneeled slowly, and pulled one of David's boots into his lap. His fingers attacked the muddy laces. “Sheppard takes good care of his team” he said quietly. “All of them, but maybe especially McKay.” He heard David inhale, preparing a protest, but he shook his head. “You don’t know. You’re not there.” He didn’t have to look up to know David was still looking very unconvinced. “Sure, the jargon maybe isn't the softest at all times, but did you know Sheppard carries extra energy bars in his pack in case McKay’s hypoglycemia gets him into trouble?”

“That’s actually a real thing? I thought for sure that was an exaggeration.”

“I have no idea, the man’s a massive hypochondriac, but that’s not the point. The point is that Sheppard is looking out for him. And he made sure the whole team is equipped with Epipens, because hypochondriac or not, McKay’s allergy _is _the real deal. Sheppard also spent _days_ with McKay at the shooting range to teach him to actually hit what he aims at. He gave up some of his own weight allowance last time the Daedalus came so McKay could stock up on more Kona and Snickers bars.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. You don’t see those things, you only see what they choose to show to the outside world.” Lorne wrapped his hand around David’s ankle, rubbed his fingers softly against the skin. “There are things going on under the surface. You and I of all people here should know that things aren't always what they look like.”

He looked up and watched David process that.

A moment later, David sat up straighter. “Wait, wait. Are you saying McKay and—“ He made a disbelieving grimace. “Who? Teyla?”

“What? No!” Lorne frowned. “I mean—” He threw up his hands. “Jesus. I don't _know_. I don't go looking for it, okay?” He gave David a warning look. “And neither should you. All I'm saying is that McKay wouldn't put up with anyone - not Sheppard, not Teyla, not Dex - if he didn't want to.”

“That’s true,” David mumbled.

“Sheppard knows McKay much better than you do, and much, _much_ better than I do, and I have to admit Sheppard is a lot more perceptive than I gave him credit for at the beginning. Very little goes under his radar. And by the way, that’s something you and your fellow botanists might want to keep in mind.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means he knows about most everything that goes on here. Like who doesn't have warm water and why. Like why the mess hall suddenly was out of sugar two weeks ago.” He gave David a pointed glance. “Like the marijuana plants hidden in the tomato patch in the hydroponics labs.”

David blinked at him. Opened his mouth. Closed it.

Lorne rolled his eyes. “You thought I didn't know about that? You thought Sheppard didn't?”

“I have nothing to do with that.” David's voice was defensive.

“Listen, I don't care. Really, I don't. But what was that fine print you were just talking about? Cover each other's backs? Look the other way?”

The look on David's face told Lorne he still had something to say on that topic, but then he apparently changed his mind because he sighed and deflated a little.

“If he knows so much, you think he knows about us?” David mumbled.

Lorne tried not to think too much about it. He didn’t think Sheppard would make a big deal of it, but even though they were in a different galaxy and more than a few lines were getting a bit blurred, DADT was still the official party line. “I honestly don't know,” he answered, his fingers busy with the boot laces again. “I don't think so.”

A moment later, a brush of cold fingers over the side of his face made him look up.

“I’m sorry, I really didn't mean... You're always good to me.” David closed his eyes and slumped backwards against the mattress with a thump. A moment later his arm draped across his face, a barrier between himself and the rest of the world. “I tried to—“ he began. He bit his lip. Stopped.

Lorne waited. He’d discovered years ago that it helped saying it out loud, saying what it was that was screaming around in your brain, bringing it out into the light so you could see that it wasn't as frightening or devastating as you thought. Lorne thought he probably picked it up from one of the shrinks that worked regularly with the SG teams back home. It worked most of the time, even when the bad things were exactly as frightening and devastating as you thought. It still seemed to help a little to get it out, even if you only told the walls of an empty room.

“How do you do it?” David was staring at the dim ceiling, his arm resting on his forehead now. “How do you do it?” he repeated, something desperate in his voice. “How do you not come apart? I mean, how do you—“ His mouth twisted and he pressed his hands over his face.

“David.” Lorne placed a hand on his knee, felt shivers there he hadn't noticed before. “You did good.”

David made a harsh sound. Laugh or a sob, Lorne couldn't tell.

“I tried to be careful.” David's voice was muffled behind his hands. “But I kept slipping, and Jesus, the blood, it just kept bleeding even though I pressed as hard as I could, like he told me, like Renzie told me, but McKay— You heard him. I hurt him.”

Lorne eased the muddy boots off. He tossed them in the direction of the door. They made a dull sound as they bounced on the floor. “You slowed the bleeding.” He sat back on his heels. “He still has a chance, you know. Thanks to you. You did good.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that.

Lorne slid his hand over the hard bones of the knee, down the lean muscle of the calf, hidden under the dark fabric. “It's true.” Slipping his fingers inside the soggy socks, he peeled them off. They joined the boots on the floor. He got to his feet, leaned over and pulled David to his feet. David didn't lower his hands when Lorne released them. He turned them over. Stared at them like he could still see sticky redness there.

Lorne remembered sitting on his mother's lap in the kitchen, shaking for hours and hours when Killian had been hit by a car in the street. Killian, who’d been so small when they got him, who’d grown so big he'd take Lorne out walking, more than the other way around. Lorne had caught a glimpse of the strong, broken body on the street before being pulled away, pulled back. A long hind leg twisted at an impossible angle. Eyes flat, like burned, brittle glass.

David's eyes looked a little like Killian's and Lorne stepped in, wrapped his arms around the tense shoulders, around the damp clothes, around the shivers that were spreading. Sometimes saying it out loud wasn't enough. Sometimes you needed someone else to tell you things were fine, someone else to show which way to go when your own compass had shattered and your sense of direction had taken a nosedive in the middle of running scared.

“You did everything right,” he said, his mouth close to David's ear. “You're okay.”

It was just adrenaline long gone. It was lingering fear and a touch of shock. It was David being David and not being trained for these kinds of things. He wasn't expected to be. That was why Lorne and Sheppard and Renzie and the rest of them were there, and Lorne told him as much. He felt David's hands find their way in under his jacket, latching onto his shirt behind his back. Felt more than heard the uneven exhalations, the stuttering inhalations. Lorne carded his fingers slowly through the short hair at the nape of David's neck and waited patiently.

Eventually, David sighed raggedly against Lorne's shoulder and pushed back a fraction. He ran a hand over his face. “Sorry,” he said. He sounded exhausted. Embarrassed.

Lorne took a small step back. “Don't worry about it.”

David didn't look convinced, but said nothing.

“A warm shower, something to eat, and then I think it's naptime for you,” Lorne said.

David nodded. “Yeah.” He undressed in silence. “Join me? Please?” he asked as he headed towards the bathroom. He didn't wait to see if Lorne followed.

Lorne shrugged out of his jacket and left his wet clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor by the door. He had planned on going back to his own room, but what the hell. A shower was a shower, right? Stepping in under the spray of warm water, he tilted his head back. He let it flow over him for a few, precious moments before reaching around and grabbed a bottle and squirting out a handful of shampoo in his palm. He worked it through his own hair, over his body, rinsing away the mud and the sweat quickly.

David had settled with his back against the wall, his face turned up against the spray. He looked like he was about to fall asleep. Lorne averted the spray a little from his face and poured more shampoo in his hand.

“Close your eyes,” he said and stepped closer.

He rubbed his fingers through David's short hair, working up a thick, white lather. David sighed, a small, pleased sound, and bowed his head, tucking his chin to his chest for Lorne's hands to get better access.

This was different, he thought as his fingers made circles against David's scalp. They usually didn't do this. Didn't take care of each other like this. Took care of, yes, of course, but not like this. A few minutes here and a precious hour there wasn't exactly the best foundation on which to build a solid, multi-facetted relationship. The sex was great, you wouldn't hear Lorne complain anytime this century, but this, he realized, this felt different, like they’d left something more than their dirty clothes back there on the floor. It felt… complicated. With his wrist he rubbed at the soap that stung his eyes and grinned wryly. He was thirty-five years old, stationed in another galaxy, fighting against creatures that liked leather, bad bleach jobs, and sucking your life away. His job was trying to protect a city that was running low on exactly everything – power, food, allies, ammo, so you'd really think life shouldn't be able to get much more complicated than that.

He kept massaging David’s head, long after it was shampoo-free. His eyes were closed against the warm spray of water when David suddenly pulled him close and turned them. Lorne almost stumbled, his balance off in the small space, but David's grip was tight and a moment later Lorne’s back hit the cool wall. The wet mouth on him wasn't soft, there was too much pressure to call it that, too much teeth against his face, down along his throat, against his shoulder. One hand snaked around and pulled him closer, and Lorne lifted his hands, aiming to direct David's mouth to his, but David intercepted him, grabbed his wrists and pulled them down, pressed them flat against the wall by Lorne’s sides. Hard. Keep them there, his grip said. Lorne spread his palms flat against the cool surface. If this was something David needed, this control, then Lorne was happy to play along. 

He let himself be crushed against the cool, wet wall, let himself be held in place. David's fingers scraped down over his chest and stomach, short nails grazing the angle of his hips. Then David slid down to his knees under the falling water. He looked up at Lorne under his lashes. Lorne bit his lip, flexed his fingers, then nodded. He wasn't sure what he was agreeing to, but whatever David needed to get through the day, he would give it.

David cupped the back of his thighs, pulled him forward again. Lorne swallowed and closed his eyes against the water that still fell over them as David leaned in and brought one hand up to wrap around the base of Lorne’s cock.

He was already starting to grow hard. David had a way of doing that to him. He moved his hips to meet the friction-pressure of David's hand. He shifted his feet, placed them further apart for balance and for better access.

The world soon shrunk down to David's warm hand on his cock, moving in tandem with the one that stroked down his back, his ass, brushing up between his legs to touch his balls lightly. He exhaled shakily and tilted his head back, letting his eyes lose focus.

When David's warm mouth joined his hand, Lorne sucked in a breath. “Oh, god,” he groaned. David's hands on him always felt a little like flying. A little like everything Lorne loved about his job.

When he glanced down he saw David's other hand moving between his own legs. Fast and hard, just like the one accompanying the mouth on Lorne. Neither of them was in the mood to take it slow and it wasn't long until Lorne was breathing hard, open-mouthed, body stiff against the urge to bury himself in David's mouth. His nails scraped against the slick tiles, looking for some kind of purchase as he squeezed his eyes shut. His muscles were vibrating with the building release, with friction and warmth and slick suction. Everything was coiling up on the inside, sweet, sweet tightness. He spread his arms wide against the tiles behind him, but it was futile. He wasn't flying any more. He was falling out of the sky. Falling.

“David,” he warned, his voice hoarse. “David—“

David took him all the way down and the constriction of his throat when he swallowed around Lorne's cock sent sparks, hot and bright, up his spine, and he shuddered as he came.

The mental white noise was still loud in his head when he felt David shift by his feet. Slitting his eyes open and looking down, he saw David's hand move quickly over his own cock, from the flushed tip down to the dark curls at the base, and up again. David's eyes were screwed shut under the warm water. He hunched over a little more and brought his free hand up, searching for purchase against Lorne's slippery skin. Lorne reached down. Threaded his fingers through David's.

David made a needy, greedy sound and his nails dug deep into Lorne's skin. Another couple of twisting strokes, one, two, three, and David's rhythm faltered. He tensed up against Lorne. With a strangled moan, he came.

The only sound for a long time was their breathing slowing and the water spraying down around them. Warm and soothing and perfect.

A gentle finger tapped against his thigh and Lorne opened his eyes.

“You still with me?” David asked with a small smile.

Lorne realized he was patting David. Patting lightly, gently, while still holding David’s hand. David's other arm had wrapped around Lorne's legs, the side of his face resting against Lorne's thigh.

Lorne grinned tiredly. Yeah. He was still here. He leaned down and gave David's upturned face a soft, open-mouthed kiss. He rested his forehead against David's. “You know you're everything good in this world, right?” he murmured.

David blushed and Lorne grabbed him under the arms and helped him carefully to his feet. David ran his hands down his body, rinsing off before stepping out of the shower. Lorne caught the soft towel David lobbed his way and scrubbed it over his hair before wrapping it around his hips and following David into the bedroom again. He kicked his clothes out of the way as he passed them.

The air in the room that had felt warm just minutes ago was now cool and fresh against his wet skin. Curbing a yawn, he watched David step into a pair of shorts and pull a t-shirt over his head.

“How long do you think before we'll hear from Dr. Beckett?” David asked. He looked up at Lorne. Some of the worry was back around his eyes again.

“I don't know. Another hour, maybe.” Lorne glanced at the alarm clock, and in an instant, all traces of post-coital sleepiness evaporated. “Shit!” He hurried back to the bathroom.

David trailed behind, hovering uncertainly in the doorway. “What?”

Lorne dug through the heap that was his dirty, wet clothes. He located his pants and shook them out. “Debriefing with Weir and Sheppard in ten minutes.” He made a face at the cold, soggy material as he pulled the pants on. He stuffed his shorts into his pocket. Reaching down he sorted out his boots and his socks. “I have to change clothes.”

He looked up to see the doorway empty. He shoved his socks into the inner pocket of his jacket with a sting of guilt. He didn't like coming and going like this, staying only for the sex, but it wasn't like he had much of a choice. And honestly, he hadn't come for this. He'd just wanted to make sure David was okay. He slid his bare feet into the wet boots and made a grimace. Ugh. 

“Here. You can take this.”

Lorne looked up from tying his laces to see a dark gray, plain cotton t-shirt held out at him. “Thanks.”

It was a pretty good fit and he quickly smoothed down his hair with both hands before putting his watch on. He grabbed his radio and jacket. David had moved to his desk. His hands were stuffed deep in the pockets of the cargo pants he must have grabbed while getting the shirt for Lorne. He didn't look upset. Just tired.

Lorne rubbed a hand over his face. “I gotta go,” he said apologetically. 

David nodded. He looked down at his bare feet. “I know.”

Lorne shrugged into his damp jacket. It smelled dank and earthy, like mud and stale water. Like almost-disaster. Could still be. McKay wasn't out of the woods yet.

He checked his watch again. Damn. He really had to go.

He had almost reached the door when he turned and strode back across the floor. David stood up straighter as he approached. Lorne pulled him in with both hands and kissed him.

He waited until David opened his eyes again. “I'll try my best to come back later tonight,” he said, his hands still cradling David's face.

“Okay.”

Lorne gave him one more kiss. He meant it. Verbatim. He’d _try_, but this was Atlantis, things happened, stuff blew up with regular intervals, people fell off piers, the Genii could pop in for a visit. Anything.

Lorne glanced back over his shoulder as he reached the door. The small, happy smile on David's face made him want to grin, but just then he door whispered open and he had to school his face.

The hallway was still bathed in the flat, gray afternoon light of winter. Lorne adjusted his radio and checked behind him casually. No one in sight. He allowed the smile that still lingered close under the surface to emerge as he palmed the controls for the transporter. Anything could happen, they'd seen that with their own eyes on more than one occasion, but in this very moment he was pretty sure that the city would have to be on fire and the Wraith right there on their door step for him to not make it back to David at some point tonight.

Lavender had always smelled a little like home.

~ The End ~


End file.
